How people learn foreign languages.
Have you ever wondered what the hell goes on in your mind when you learn a new language? Like, it's pretty crazy, right? You already have 10,000 or so words from your native language whirling around in your head (depending on your language and how much you like to read; my English vocab is about 21,000), and then you're gonna go and learn duplicates of most of those, and then try not to get the two sets of words mixed up, and remember when to use which set of words and when. And for some reason, learning the second one seems way harder than learning the first one, even though you'd think that it should be easier if you've already done it once before.
In the future, I will be posting more about languages on Steemit. It's something that I've been planning to do since before I started blogging here, and it isn't really covered a great deal on the website, to the best of my knowledge (with the exception of bilingual posts).
Topics I've been planning on sharing include:
- Spanish pronunciation rules
- Spanish basic phrases for travellers
- Turkish pronunciation rules
- Turkish basic phrases for travellers
- Farsi basic phrases for travellers
- Excellent language books and online resources
This is something a little different to that. As mentioned in my last post, I've begun a course to become an English teacher. (Or, as I need to keep explaining to everyone in my hostel when they wonder why the hell I've been in Guadalajara for four weeks but seen so little of the city and surrounding areas, estoy aquí para estudiar para ser un maestro de inglés.)
I recently submitted my first essay, which is about how students respond to different teaching techniques and stimuli based on personal factors, such as their motivation, skill set and linguistic background. I scored 97 in this paper. It's something very different from what I usually post here on Steemit (good travel stories and bad travel photos), however it is something that I genuinely believe will add value to the platform. If you are learning a language, or are interested in learning or teaching languages, I hope you will find this post insightful and beneficial.
Introduction:
Study of foreign languages is undertaken by students with a variety of motivations, commitment levels, and skill sets. All of these factors affect the outcome of each individual student's language learning process. Through the use of research into different teaching methods and techniques, as well as understanding the individual capabilities and requirements of each student, teachers can better tailor their approaches to effectively maximise the learning of the students. This essay will explore the application of these findings to an interview subject who is currently learning English as a second language.
Student background:
David Barrios (name changed for Steemit; hereafter referred to as “the student”) is a 22-year-old lawyer living in Guadalajara, Mexico. The student's country of birth is Mexico and his sole nationality is Mexican. The student's native language is Spanish, and he is currently learning English at IMAC Total Inglés, Guadalajara, as an A2 level (Open Mind 2B) student. No other members of the student's family speak English. The student does not regularly speak English outside of school, however he listens to English language music. The student has indicated that he is considering a career change into accounting, and has also expressed a desire to learn German in the future.
Motivation:
The student has expressed a desire to travel to countries where English is the primary language, or widely spoken as a second language. In particular, he has expressed a desire to travel to the USA. This desire is an intrinsic motivation for the student to learn English, so that he may better function within the societies of the countries he wishes to travel to.
Furthermore, the student has stated that he believes that proficiency in English will be beneficial to his future career advancement, although he was not able to elaborate on how he can incorporate English in his workplace. Nonetheless, the desire for career advancement represents a second, extrinsic motivation for the student to improve his English.
The combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations combine simultaneously as factors in the student's motivation to learn English.(1)
Learning style of student:
The results of the Multiple Intelligence questionnaire indicate that the student has a varied skill set. The only category in which the student achieved a low score was spatial. The student's scores were especially strong in intra-personal, musical, and logical-mathematical, of which the latter demonstrates congruence with his desire to pursue a career in accounting. The student also achieved moderately high scores in the kinesthetic, inter-personal and linguistic categories. Given this spread of abilities, the student has the potential to respond positively to a variety of teaching methods; while his particularly strong scores in intra-personal, musical and logical-mathematical indicate that the student can achieve success through self-teaching and self-reflection, actively listening to English-language music, and problem solving activities, such as crosswords.(2)
Teaching approach that will be used in the one to one class:
The class will be conducted exclusively in English, primarily using a communicative approach, with the teacher playing the role of a facilitator; drawing out the knowledge of the student to actively produce the language.(3) Music, as a fundamental manifestation of the English language(4) will be incorporated, as the student has indicated that he enjoys English language music. Tailoring the class to the student's interests will assist in maximising his engagement, by allowing him to work at an appropriate complexity level with the familiarity of a topic that he relates to.(5)
Teaching action plan:
The student has stated that he is comfortable with reading, writing and grammar, but less comfortable with speaking. The student has also cited nerves and anxiety when speaking English, although he appeared to conduct himself with a considerable degree of confidence during the interview. Given these assertions, the one to one class will focus on speaking as the principal method of information exchange.
During the observation of the student's regular class, the teacher encouraged significant student talk time. However, this was mostly in the form of global class activities, with the student talk time divided between the four students in the class. In these conditions, the student was only able to speak in English for 5-10 minutes of the classroom time. In a one to one setting, an open ended conversation between student and teacher can allow a student talk time of 25 minutes or more during the allotted 50 minutes.
Goals of the one to one class:
The student's broad range of learning styles, as ascertained in the Multiple Intelligence questionnaire, allow him to benefit from a variety of activities. The student's current progress in the Open Mind 2 textbook will provide the framework for the lesson, with a principal focus on teaching the content through conversation. This will allow the student to reinforce the appropriate grammar structures in his mind through verbal usage, while allowing the teacher to assess the student's pronunciation and delivery. The relevant vocabulary will be reinforced through English language music provided by the teacher.
Upon completion of the requisite textbook material, the student will then be allowed to select from one of several conversation topics that would most interest him, in order to participate in an in-depth conversation with the teacher. The final 10 minutes of the lesson will be dedicated to feedback, vocabulary recap, as well as pronunciation training if required.
Given that the student has expressed strong motivation to learn English, but limited exposure to the language outside the classroom, the feedback time will also be used to ascertain if he has any desire to further his extracurricular learning through the use of internet technology. If so, the student will be provided with a selection of resources, such as HelloTalk, a mobile application which can be used to converse with native speakers, or Duolingo, a gamification program used for building vocabulary. Given the student's strong intra-personal and problem-solving skills, usage of this technology can benefit him in extending and accelerating his learning process, through increased immersion in the language.(6)
Conclusion:
The student has demonstrated a strong aptitude and desire to master the English language. He is making strong progress in his English immersion course at IMAC, however by utilising the one to one class to focus on his weaknesses, as well as providing tools to leverage his strengths and allow him to further his education outside the classroom setting, the student can accelerate to a significantly higher level.
Citations:
- Harmer, Jeremy. (2007) The Practice of English Language Teaching, Fourth Edition. Longman, pp 98-104
- International Teacher Training Organization. (2017) A TEFL Certificate Course. pp 173
- International Teacher Training Organization. (2017) A TEFL Certificate Course. pp 176-177
- Robertson, Frederick. (1840) English Preacher Book.
- https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-learner-interest-matters-john-mccarthy
- http://carla.umn.edu/immersion/documents/ImmersionResearch_TaraFortune.html
I think its just a science of learning. There is a systematic way and of course if that guy is good in language generally its an added advantage.
There's certainly been a lot of different language teaching approaches over the years, with each one claiming to be the One True Way. Nowadays, most schools use a mixture of approaches.
One thing that I think is very good about the school I'm doing my training in is that all instruction is carried out in the target language, which enables the student to think in the target language. One thing that has held my Spanish back quite a bit is that I've learned everything through translation, which means I now have to train myself to avoid translating everything into English, which is a barrier to fluency. But I'm getting there.
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Learning other languages has been my major problem but am very sure that soon i will do exploit @donnymurph
Which language are you trying to learn?
I am the only Spanish speaker in my family and learned it in high school and college. I only spoke it at school as well. Now I live in Panama and use it pretty much every day. It's great to learn another language and I'm working hard to get my kids to learn. I want my husband to learn as well. Looking forward to more of your posts.
Where are you from originally?
In Australia it's pretty uncommon to learn a foreign language other than as a hobby. Native English speakers really are lazy language learners. There's statistics on it.
I am originally from the US - Texas. It is required in most if not all high schools to spend at least 2 years in a foreign language. Here in Panama they have a requirement for all high school graduates to know English.
Is that a law for Texas only, or the whole country? I know there is a lot of language overlap along the border areas of the US and Mexico. It's pretty much impossible to get a university degree in Mexico now without being fluent in English as well.
Yes, I was working in Mexico with college students, so I had to take the TOEFL test as well so I could be a student. It was awesome...I was the first one finished. ;) I'm not sure if the law is for all of the US or just Texas. I think it was made US-wide a few years ago...
Second language education should be mandatory, I think. And instruction should be in the target language, rather than through translation. Bilingualism has been proven to have cognitive benefits, but then that's another post altogether.
Yes, for sure. I completely agree! The instruction should be in the target language for the most part. Wow, that sounds so hard...not really how I learned, but how my kids will!
I think it's okay to do the first month through translation just to give a foundation, especially for "function words", such as the, a, and, if, whether, either, or, neither, nor, because their meanings are abstract so it's obviously easier to teach them through translation. But yeah, once the groundwork is done, instruction in the target language is much better.
For example, if a student asks what the word "lodilla" means, obviously their Spanish is going to benefit more by saying "es en la pared, naranja, rectángulo" while drawing a rectangle shape with your fingers, than by simply saying "it's a brick".
Fantasic post! I only wish as many people spent more time other languages than English! Although I can't speak as its my first and only language.
I have always enjoyed languages so looking forward to reading your posts.
DuoLingo is an I have used in the past.
Good luck in the English Teacher Training, it is a hard language to learn as a second language I've been told.
Native English speakers statistically are less likely to be bilingual, which is a shame because there are proven mental benefits to being bilingual.
English grammatical structures are very simple and therefore easy to learn. However, it is a very chaotic language, because it has borrowed from many other languages over the centuries. Also, being a lingua franca all over the world means that the language is changing in different ways in different places at the same time, which makes it even more chaotic. There are no hard and fast phonetic rules in English, which makes the pronunciation very tricky. You can't read an English word and automatically know how it's pronounced. You can do that in most languages.
So English is an easy language to learn, but a difficult language to master. You've probably noticed this when you speak to the many, many non-native English speakers that you have met. Their grammar is usually pretty good (maybe a few mistakes with the word order, but nothing more than that). However, they mispronounce a lot of words. It doesn't matter though, because they are still able to communicate clearly with you. They know English, they just haven't mastered it yet.
Very true. My friend @niamilena is russian her English is excellent now but at first it was hard. I've heard that the latin languages are eaaier to learn such as Spanish, Italian, french as they are all based around the same aet of worlds.
Like pinapple everywhere else says Anans is it and we say pineapple ha ha
The Latin languages are usually pretty easy if you already speak a Latin language. For example, I know Italians that live in Spain, who speak Italian with the locals, who reply to them in Spanish, and they can communicate effectively enough.
English is a Germanic language; however after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the country was ruled by the French for 600 years, and Latin was used in church until Protestantism took over from Catholicism. So English has absorbed so many Latin words to the point that around 60% of the words in the English language aren't from Germanic origin. That gives us a bit of a boost when learning Latin languages. Here are a few examples of English words and their Spanish equivalents, to give you an idea.
What makes Spanish tricky is that there's 49 ways to conjugate every verb. For the verb "to be", there's 98, because they have two different versions of the verb. There's a few other tricky aspects, but overall, Spanish isn't all that difficult, although definitely a bit more difficult than English.
How interesting!!! Thank you for sharing the knowledge.
I had no idea that high of a percentage actually came from Latin not Germanic.
It's so fastinating and to think of all the variants of English you mentioned earlier play into all of it and of course slang terms.
There's literally thousands of cognates going from English to Latin languages. In the case of Spanish, they usually adhere to some very easy rules. But there are a few of what we call "false friends". For example, "embarazado" in Spanish means "pregnant", although you'd think it would mean embarrassed. And it's not too hard to see how pregnancy and embarrassment could come from the same etymological origin, but nonetheless, they mean very different things.
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